My first reaction to his unlimited progress riff was "every specific thing I care about will be gone". The answer is presumably that there will be more things to care about. However, that initial reaction is probably common enough that it might be worth working on replies to people who are less inclined to abstraction than I am.

I'll take the edge off his optimism somewhat by pointing out that individuals and cultures can be rolled over by change, even if the whole system is becoming more capable, and we care about individuals and cultures (especially if they're us or ours) as well as the whole system.. Taking European diseases to the New World happened by accident.

Still, the pursuit of knowledge and competence may well be the least bad strategy the vast majority of the time (rather than a guarantee of things becoming more wonderful for what we personally care about), and I'm intrigued by the idea of explicitly intending to increase the returns for cooperation.